Introduction/Age of Conan
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[edit] Lore
Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures is an MMORPG based on Robert E. Howard's original works about Conan, a Cimmerian. The stories of Conan are extensive, and have been extended by other authors mainly through comics after Howard's death.
The world of Conan is called Hyboria. The world is large and contains many countries and races. The world is filled with conflict, magic and lightly dressed women. In Howard's stories Conan is presented in many different roles: a penniless wanderer, a captain of the guard, a leader of rogue outcasts pillaging nations, a pirate and eventually a King of one of the largest nations in Hyboria, Aquilonia.
The timeline of Age of Conan starts shortly after the events of The Hour of the Dragon, when Conan becomes King. Conan will not be playable in the game. Conan is to be featured as an NPC character that can possibly be met in the game.
[edit] Gameplay Features
There are many MMOs out there to choose from, and there are more on their way. Age of Conan brings several new features to the industry, as well as bringing together the best features that other games offer, creating a very great experience for the player.
[edit] Combat system
The combat system in Age of Conan is probably the most revolutionary element the game brings to the MMO scene.
Melee combat has in many MMOs been reduced to an auto-attack feature with certain abilities you can use to do more damage. Age of Conan is designed to make the player feel more in the game, removing any auto-attack, giving the player complete control over when, where and from what angle he or she wants to hit their opponent. The game also has a combo system, enabling players to follow certain stroke paths to deal more damage to their opponent.
The ranged combat system in Age of Conan also differs from many other MMOs. Instead of targeting a character to attack and merely auto-attacking that target, the player must aim, making skill an important factor when playing the game. There are several ways of aiming at your opponent; some require a lot of skill and deals serious damage, while others makes it easier to aim, but deal less damage.
Not selecting a single target enables the player to deal damage to more than one opponent at a time in both melee and ranged combat, depending on the weapon he uses and the method in which he attacks.
Mounted combat in Age of Conan is a unique system, rather than just using mounts as a means to an end for traveling from point A to point B. You can actually fight from the back of your mount. Be it horses, camels or some other special beast of burden. Mounted combat adds a level of gameplay not seen in previous combat systems. Combat from mounts is limited and different from ordinary ranged or melee combat.
Spellweaving is a new way of doing magic in Age of Conan. While you have your normal spells to cast at your opponents to deal damage, spellweaving enables you to sew together several spells before firing them off, dealing more damage in one blast. Several players are also able to create a spell together, enabling a mix of spells from different classes that can do magic a single class cannot.
While these regular ways of combat have been refined to make the user experience more intense, Funcom has also added ways to do combat rarely seen in previous games. Mounted combat enables you to fight from horseback, swiftly riding through your enemies slashing them down as you go. Age of Conan also comes with siege combat. Siege combat is a large scale battle over battlekeeps, giving access to siege engines and special mounts used to bring down great enemies in these epic battles.
[edit] Player Cities and Battlekeeps
To give players a way of forming the world, Age of Conan enables guilds to build both Player cities and battlekeeps.
Player cities gives the guild an opportunity to build buildings and other improvements that can perform beneficial tasks for the guild, such as creating an NPC vendor where guild members can sell items, and players from the guild and other guilds can come to buy.
The battlekeeps are built in a zone specifically designed for PvP, called The Border Kingdoms. There's only enough room for a limited number of battlekeeps, so if a guild wants to build one and there's no more room in The Border Kingdoms, they are forced to attack a current battlekeep to take it over.
[edit] Graphics
Age of Conan has become well known for its graphics. The engine will also use DirectX 10 to create beautiful scenery and amazing combat scenes. You can find many screenshots displaying these incredible graphics in our screenshots section.
[edit] Starting in Age of Conan
[edit] Character Creation
The first thing you choose when you create a character in Age of Conan is the sex of your character. You then select the race of your character. The choices you have are Cimmerian, Aquilonian and Stygian. Be careful when you choose your race, because not every race can play every class. You can check which races can play which characters on the race/class chart.
Designing your character in Age of Conan is far more elaborate than in most other MMOs. The system is made so that everybody should be able to make their character look unique, allowing you to choose the size of your chest, nose, the height of your eyebrows, the length of your face, basically every measurement of your body on a sliding scale, and of course, you're able to choose your hair style and color and many other things as well. At character creation you choose your archetype and class. The archetypes you will be able to choose from are Mage, Priest, Soldier and Rogue. Each archetype is divided into three classes.
- See Also: Choosing your Class
